Word: crewed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...passengers and the 14 crew members of the KLM plane perished. There were 67 survivors from the Pan Am plane?most of them from California, where the flight had originated. One woman died aboard the military aircraft sent to fly the injured back to the U.S. At week's end nine remained in critical condition, suffering severe burns. The accident almost certainly will involve the highest insurance claims for any non-natural disaster. Estimates from London insurers placed the potential payout at $240 million. Survivors in California already have filed a class action suit against KLM, Pan Am and Boeing...
...pilot not heard the Pan Am Clipper's report that it had not yet cleared the runway and would report again when it had? Or had the KLM crew somehow mistaken the Pan Am message to mean that the Clipper had, rather than had not, cleared the runway? Even if there had been such a misunderstanding, of course, the KLM pilot should have awaited the tower O.K. to proceed...
Their flight over Belgium, France and Spain, then southward over the Atlantic, had been smooth. Some may have been able to read KLM's in-flight magazine, featuring their skipper, Captain Veldhuizen, as a handsome example of the airline's reputation for "reliability." When word was radioed to the crew that Las Palmas Airport had been closed because terrorists had touched off a bomb in a local flower shop, injuring eight people, they landed at Tenerife instead. Veldhuizen took advantage of the delay to refuel his plane for the flight back to Holland. He took on 21,000 gallons...
After a stop in New York City to refuel, pick up a new flight crew and 14 more passengers, the plane flew on to the Canaries. There was no grumbling when word came that they would land temporarily at Tenerife, but the early-afternoon weather there was disappointing?cool, windy and foggy. The Clipper pulled into a holding area off one end of the runway. Some passengers stood at an open door to take photos of KLM 4805 as it refueled just ahead of them...
This week reality stepped in. Late Sunday afternoon, a Pan American 747, chartered out of Los Angeles and laden with at least 394 crew and passengers, was taxiing along a foggy runway at Los Rodeos Airport on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. On an intersecting runway, a KLM 747, chartered out of Amsterdam and carrying a reported 249 people, was preparing to take off. The KLM captain gave his jet engines full power and roared down the runway-just as the Pan Am 747 taxied across his path. The two planes collided broadside. Flames and smoke towered into...